Page 58 of Bound By Her Shocking Secret

He stepped out of them, kicked them aside. Still wearing all her own clothes—a pair of trousers and a silk top—Mia dropped to her knees and heard Daniel suck in a breath.Thisshe could handle, she thought, as she wrapped her hand around Daniel’s erection, which was straining towards her.

She took him into her mouth and his hands went into her hair. ‘Mia...you don’t have to...’ But then his breath hissed out.‘Dieu, tu me tué.’ You’re killing me.

Mia was ruthless, wringing every ounce of pleasure out of Daniel, and when she was done he lifted her up and stripped her bare, eyes feverish with pleasure and fresh desire. Like this, there was no time or room for words or tenderness. And that was how Mia would get through this and stay sane.

A few days later Daniel woke at dawn, as he habitually did, his body naked and feeling so heavily pleasured that he wasn’t sure if he would be able to move. Every night he and Mia made love and fell asleep in an exhausted tangle of limbs. But when he woke she was gone.

Sometimes, like this morning, when the rush of last night’s images came back into his head, he wondered if he was losing it. If he was hallucinating these torrid nights with his wife, when she disappeared like a ghost before dawn.

He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something had changed. Making love to Mia had always been an incendiary thing, from the very first time, and it had only got hotter. But since they’d returned to Paris, there was an edge that Daniel hadn’t noticed before.

It was as if she was deliberately doing her best to send him into orbit, with a pleasure so intense and all-consuming that his days were populated by fevered daydreams. As soon as he returned to the apartment they didn’t even bother with the niceties of sharing dinner before tearing their clothes off. Dinner had become a midnight kitchen interlude.

Daniel cursed his introspection. Was he seriously analysing and scrutinising the fact that sex with his new wife was off-the-charts hot?

He got up and had a shower, before he lost it completely.

When he was on his way out of the apartment to go to work that morning, he paused at Lexi’s bedroom door. It was open a crack and he pushed it open all the way. Lexi was on her back in the cot. Mia was in the bed on the other side of the room, also on her back, asleep, hair spread around her head in a wild tangle.

The bed that was for the nanny. Not his wife.

Immediately Daniel wanted to scoop her up and place her back intotheirbed. And then he wanted to bend down, wrap her hair around his hand, wake her with a deep, drugging kiss and have her beg and moan for mercy, in punishment for leaving him feeling weak after so much pleasure.

A little stunned at the intensity of his thoughts, Daniel stepped back. Mia moved minutely on the bed and he noticed slight shadows under her eyes. A faint tension around her mouth. Something wasn’t quite right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. And Daniel instinctively shied away from looking too closely, telling himself again that he was being paranoid. They were in the honeymoon phase that every couple went through, and their marriage wasn’t about regular intimacies like waking up together.

Everything was fine. What more did he want?

‘So, Mia, can you tell us how you met Daniel Devilliers?’

Mia was totally out of her comfort zone, talking to the radio host, but she was doing her best to sound confident.

This was the last PR interview before the launch party for the new jewellery line this evening. She’d already seen the huge billboards featuring eye-catching images from the Costa Rica campaign, but the images were so hyper-stylised they didn’t even really look like her.

Instead of marvelling over them, all she could think of was of the time she’d spent there with Daniel. Watching him bond with Lexi. Making love again for the first time. Discovering his fear of water, what he’d told her of his sister. All those moments that had felt tender, but which she knew now had been contrived to get her where he wanted her.

In his bed and shackled to his side.

‘When did you know you were in love with your husband?’

Mia blinked and came back to the present moment. Maybe she’d misheard? ‘I’m sorry, can you repeat the question?’

‘Of course. We would love to know when you fell in love with your husband?’

Mia longed to say something blasé, but the memories of Costa Rica were still vivid in her mind’s eye. She knew Daniel was outside the small radio studio, listening, and the words that she was terrified of speaking now tumbled out of her mouth, as if she knew she had a licence to say them without fear of censure. After all, it was what everyone expected. They didn’t want to hear that there was no love in their marriage. They wanted the fairy tale.

The problem was, so did she—in spite of everything.

She said, ‘I think I always loved him...from the first moment I saw him. But we went our separate ways, and it wasn’t until we met again that I knew I’d never stopped loving him. And then, when I saw him with Lexi, our daughter...that’s when I knew I would love him for ever.’

The radio presenter sighed theatrically.‘Ah, l’amour...c’est fantastique, non?’

They wrapped up the interview after that and Mia emerged, feeling a little dazed. Daniel led her to his car, and when they were in the back, speeding away, he tugged at his tie.

‘You did well,’ he said, and then, ‘What is it with this obsession with romance and love? Everyone wants there to be some fairy tale story.’

He looked at her, and her skin prickled with awareness.

He said, ‘You answered well. I almost believed you myself.’

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